Lab group

We went out to dinner last week as a lab group, and below you can see a picture of the group, plus a few of the guys' significant others. The research group is led by Dr. Richard Berry.

We study rotary molecular motors, most often the bacterial flagellar motor. Basically, some bacteria, such as E.Coli., have a motor in the cellular envelope that is attached to a helical filament. They spin this filament in order to swim. Their goal is to swim towards food, and they are able to spin their motors backwards to change direction. It is our goal to understand how these motors work. One challenge in this process is developing advanced imaging techniques in order to 'see' the motors. In a typical optical microscope, the motor is not able to be resolved.